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Thousands of California soldiers forced to repay enlistment bonuses a decade after going to war

(California Army National Guard)

by David S. Cloud
Short of troops to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan a decade
ago, the California National Guard enticed thousands of soldiers with
bonuses of $15,000 or more to reenlist and go to war.

Now the Pentagon is demanding the money back.

Nearly 10,000 soldiers, many of whom served multiple
combat tours, have been ordered to repay large enlistment bonuses — and
slapped with interest charges, wage garnishments and tax liens if they
refuse — after audits revealed widespread overpayments by the California
Guard at the height of the wars last decade.

Investigations
have determined that lack of oversight allowed for widespread fraud and
mismanagement by California Guard officials under pressure to meet
enlistment targets.

But soldiers say the military is reneging on 10-year-old
agreements and imposing severe financial hardship on veterans whose only
mistake was to accept bonuses offered when the Pentagon needed to fill
the ranks.

People like me just got screwed.— Christopher Van Meter, former Army captain.

“These
bonuses were used to keep people in,” said Christopher Van Meter, a
42-year-old former Army captain and Iraq veteran from Manteca,
Calif., who says he refinanced his home mortgage to repay $25,000 in
reenlistment bonuses and $21,000 in student loan repayments that the
Army says he should not have received. “People like me just got
screwed.”

In Iraq, Van Meter was thrown from an armored
vehicle turret — and later awarded a Purple Heart for his combat
injuries — after the vehicle detonated a buried roadside bomb.

Susan
Haley, a Los Angeles native and former Army master sergeant who
deployed to Afghanistan in 2008, said she sends the Pentagon $650 a
month — a quarter of her family’s income — to pay down $20,500 in
bonuses that the Guard says were given to her improperly.

“I feel totally betrayed,” said Haley, 47, who served 26
years in the Army along with her husband and oldest son, a medic who
lost a leg in combat in Afghanistan.

Haley, who now lives
in Kempner, Texas, worries they may have to sell their house to repay
the bonuses. “They’ll get their money, but I want those years back,” she
said, referring to her six-year reenlistment.

The
problem offers a dark perspective on the Pentagon’s use of hefty cash
incentives to fill its all-volunteer force during the longest era of
warfare in the nation’s history.

Even Guard officials concede that taking back the money from military veterans is distasteful.

“At
the end of the day, the soldiers ended up paying the largest price,”
said Maj. Gen. Matthew Beevers, deputy commander of the California
Guard. “We’d be more than happy to absolve these people of their debts.
We just can’t do it. We’d be breaking the law.”

Facing
enlistment shortfalls and two major wars with no end in sight, the
Pentagon began offering the most generous incentives in its history to
retain soldiers in the mid-2000s.

It also began paying the money up front, like the signing bonuses that some businesses pay in the civilian sector.

They’ll get their money, but I want those years back.— Susan Haley, former Army master sergeant

“It
was a real sea change in how business was done,” said Col. Michael S.
Piazzoni, a California Guard official in Sacramento who oversaw the
audits. “The system paid everybody up front, and then we spent the next
five years figuring out if they were eligible.”

The
bonuses were supposed to be limited to soldiers in high-demand
assignments like intelligence and civil affairs or to noncommissioned
officers badly needed in units due to deploy to Iraq or Afghanistan.

The
National Guard Bureau, the Pentagon agency that oversees state Guard
organizations, has acknowledged that bonus overpayments occurred in
every state at the height of the two wars.

But the money
was handed out far more liberally in the California Guard, which has
about 17,000 soldiers and is one of the largest state Guard
organizations.

In 2010, after reports surfaced of
improper payments, a federal investigation found that thousands of
bonuses and student loan payments were given to California
Guard soldiers who did not qualify for them, or were approved despite
paperwork errors.

Army Master Sgt. Toni Jaffe, the
California Guard’s incentive manager, pleaded guilty in 2011 to filing
false claims of $15.2 million and was sentenced to 30 months in federal
prison. Three officers also pleaded guilty to fraud and were put on
probation after paying restitution.

Instead
of forgiving the improper bonuses, the California Guard assigned 42
auditors to comb through paperwork for bonuses and other incentive
payments given to 14,000 soldiers, a process that was finally completed
last month.

Roughly 9,700 current and retired soldiers
have been told by the California Guard to repay some or all of their
bonuses and the recoupment effort has recovered more than $22 million so
far.

Because of protests, appeals and refusal by some to comply, the recovery effort is likely to continue for years.

In
interviews, current and former California Guard members described being
ordered to attend mass meetings in 2006 and 2007 in California where
officials signed up soldiers in assembly-line fashion after outlining
the generous terms available for six-year reenlistments.

Robert
Richmond, an Army sergeant first class then living in Huntington Beach,
said he reenlisted after being told he qualified for a $15,000 bonus as
a special forces soldier.

The money gave him “breathing
room,” said Richmond, who had gone through a divorce after a deployment
to Afghanistan in 2002 and 2003.

In 2007, his special
forces company was sent to the Iraqi town of Hillah, 60 miles south of
Baghdad in an area known as the “Triangle of Death” because of the
intense fighting.

Richmond conducted hundreds of
missions against insurgents over the next year. In one, a roadside bomb
exploded by his vehicle, knocking him out and leaving him with permanent
back and brain injuries.

He was stunned to receive a
letter from California Guard headquarters in 2014 telling him to repay
the $15,000 and warning he faced “debt collection action” if he failed
to comply.

I signed a contract that I literally risked my life to fulfill.— Robert Richmond, former Army sergeant first class

Richmond
should not have received the money, they argued, because he already had
served 20 years in the Army in 2006, making him ineligible.

Richmond,
48, has refused to repay the bonus. He says he only had served 15 years
when he reenlisted, due to several breaks in his Army service.

He has filed appeal after appeal, even after receiving a
collection letter from the Treasury Department in March warning that his
“unpaid delinquent debt” had risen to $19,694.62 including interest and
penalties.

After quitting the California Guard so the
money wouldn’t be taken from his paycheck, he moved to Nebraska to work
as a railroad conductor, but was laid off.

He then moved to Texas to work for a construction company,
leaving his wife and children in Nebraska. With $15,000 debt on his
credit report, he has been unable to qualify for a home loan.

“I
signed a contract that I literally risked my life to fulfill,”
Richmond said bitterly. “We want somebody in the government, anybody, to
say this is wrong and we’ll stop going after this money.”

Though
they cannot waive the debts, California Guard officials say they
are helping soldiers and veterans file appeals with the National Guard
Bureau and the Army Board for Correction of Military Records, which can
wipe out the debts.

But soldiers say it is a long, frustrating process, with no guarantee of success.

Robert
D’Andrea, a retired Army major and Iraq veteran, was told to return a
$20,000 bonus he received in 2008 because auditors could not find a copy
of the contract he says he signed.

Now D’Andrea, a
financial crimes investigator with the Santa Monica Police Department,
says he is close to exhausting all his appeals.

“Everything
takes months of work, and there is no way to get your day in court,” he
said. “Some benefit of the doubt has to be given to the soldier.”

Bryan Strother, a sergeant first class from Oroville north
of Sacramento, spent four years fighting Guard claims that he owed
$25,010.32 for mistaken bonuses and student loans.

Guard
officials told Strother he had voided his enlistment contract by failing
to remain a radio operator, his assigned job, during and after a
2007-08 deployment to Iraq.

Strother filed a
class-action lawsuit in February in federal district court in Sacramento
on behalf of all soldiers who got bonuses, claiming the California
Guard “conned” them into reenlisting.

The suit asked the
court to order the recovered money to be returned to the soldiers and to
issue an injunction against the government barring further collection.

In August, Strother received a letter from the Pentagon waiving repayment of his bonus.

“We
believe he acted in good faith in accepting the $15,000,” a claims
adjudicator from the Pentagon’s Defense Legal Services Agency wrote in
the letter. He still owed $5,000 in student loan repayments, it said.

Within
weeks, lawyers for U.S. Atty. Phillip A. Talbert in Sacramento
petitioned the court to dismiss Strother’s lawsuit, arguing that it was
moot since most of his debt had been waived. A federal judge is supposed
to rule on the government’s motion by January.

“It’s a
legal foot-dragging process to wear people out and make people go away,”
said Strother. “It’s overwhelming for most soldiers.”

Indeed, some have just given up, repaying the money even before exhausting their appeals.

“It
was tearing me up, the stress, the headaches,” said Van Meter, the
former Army captain from Manteca who paid off his $46,000 debt
by refinancing his mortgage. “I couldn’t take it anymore. The amount of
stress it put us through financially and emotionally was something we
wanted to move past.”